Oof, this weekend is pretty painful at the Box-Office. “Max Payne” is expected to win, but it won’t win you any brain-cells. In fact you might lose some by attending. “[‘Payne] a nap-inducing special-effects fest, minus even the excitement of watching someone else play a game. Yawn. This is as cardboard as action-movie-making gets: slo-mo bullets and breaking glass, big explosions, rows and rows of dead bodies,” writes Marshall Fine at Hollywood and Fine. Man, that’s some funny shit. ‘Payne’ has a lowly 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The choices from there get slimmer and slimmer. If you’re an undecided voter and you think seeing Oliver Stone’s “W” will make you vote Democrat due to the incumbent office’s pathetic handling of this country over the last eight years, well, then, by all means, please go see the film. But unless you’re terribly curious. We’re not sure we can wholeheartedly recommend it (and in fact we didn’t like it much and felt it was kind of playing it safe, without saying much). We seem to be in the consensus of most critics. It’s got an average 54% rating.
After that your mainstream choices are the tea-cup drama “The Secret Lives Of Bees” (54%rating) and “Sex Drive” (41% rating). If your mom is in town, take her to the former. If your seventeen your old brother is around, take him to the latter. Otherwise, go see something that’s not mainstream for once and deign to visit an indie, arthouse theater.
Also in theaters this weekend (though some in very limited release) is Madonna’s “Filth & Wisdom” (personally, we’re gonna skip), Abel Ferrara’s “Mary,” with the lovely Juliette Binoche playing Mary Magdalene (no one outside of a few dedicated film critics even knew this one was coming out; it’s in one New York theater; good luck with that). “‘Mary’ is a convoluted, hysterical mess of a movie with grandiose spiritual airs and not a drop of humor,” writes the New York Times. Ouch.
Hmm, umm, ok, uh… well there’s “What Just Happened,” Barry Levinson’s satirical movie about movies starring Robert DeNiro as a rich, asshole film producer that you’re supposed to have sympathy for. It’s in limited release and has a not-great, but better-than-most this weekend rating of 57%, And well, that’s about it for the most part unless there’s old stuff you haven’t seen (we still want to see “Man On Wire” and “The Pleasure of Being Robbed,” and Max Ophüls’ “Lola Montes” at Film Forum). Thanks to L.A. gossip-rag Defamer for the image, we were too lazy and uninspired to make this an image.